Socio-Economic Benefits Of Telecentre Implementation In Peninsular Malaysia

This paper is based on a research study to assess the socioeconomic benefits of telecentre implementation throughout Peninsular Malaysia Telecentres are public access ICT facility that provide opportunities for communities to gain knowledge and skills in ICT particularly to address the issue of bridging the digital divide. Currently there are 1945 telecentres in Malaysia and this is expected to increase under the ninth Malaysia Plan with the recent announcement by the Government to build one telecentre in each mukim. With the proliferation of telecentre implementation it is timely to determine its potential contribution to the socio-economic development. For this, a survey was conducted involving 132 TCs drawn from a population comprising TCs implemented by state governments, NGOs, and private sectors. Result of the study shows that the highest social benefit of using TCs is education. In terms of economics, TCs have provided the community with more opportunity to improve their standard of living through access information on job opportunities. Evidence from the data also showed that community participation is necessary and crucial for the TCs to succeed.